Date:         Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:48:40 -0400
Reply-To:     Daniel Robertson <djr47@cornell.edu>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Daniel Robertson <djr47@cornell.edu>
Subject:      Re: Dynamic date writing
In-Reply-To:  <6CD9B6A6B6CCBA4FA497F07182F4EE8302D27FA0@MIAEMAILEVS1.spss.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Well, leave it to me to come up with a complicated solution when a
simple one will do!
djr


Oliver, Richard wrote:
> compute datevar=$date11.
>
> will return the current date in the form dd-mmm-yyyy.
>
> If you don't like the dashes, add:
>
> datevar=replace(datevar, "-", "").
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Daniel Robertson
> Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:13 AM
> To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Dynamic date writing
>
> There are probably clever non-Python ways to do this, but if you're
> using Python, getting the current local date is pretty easy using the
> datetime library:
>
>  import datetime
>  mydate = str(datetime.date.today())
>
> which returns '2009-08-11' as a string. If you want the date to be
> formatted differently, as in your example, you can extract and rearrange
> the date components,  e.g., something like...
>
>  myyear = str(datetime.date.today().year)  # extract the year from the
> date object, as a string
>  mymonth = str(datetime.date.today().month)  # extract the month from
> the date object, as a string
>  myday = str(datetime.date.today().day)  # extract the day from the date
> object, as a string
>  datestring = myyear[2:4] + mymonth.zfill(2) + myday  # retain just the
> last two digits of the year, and if the month is a single digit, left
> pad it with a '0'
>
> ...which gives datestring a value of '090811'. I'm sure there are more
> elegant ways to do this in Python, but you get the idea.
>
>
> Mario Giesel wrote:
>
>> Hello, SPSS users, I've got a question on dynamic date writing:
>>
>> I have daily exports of an increasing spss data file.
>> File names differ in the date they were written, e.g.
>> C:\data\090810_export.sav
>> C:\data\090811_export.sav
>> ...
>>
>> I want to insert the date part of the file name automatically,
>> i.e. the actual date is to be detected by the system and inserted into
>> the concatenated path. So far I use this solution:
>>
>> ===============================================
>> DEFINE !path ()
>> "C:\data\"
>> !ENDDEFINE.
>> DEFINE !date ()
>> "090811"
>> !ENDDEFINE.
>> SAVE OUTFILE = !path + !date + "_export.sav".
>> ===============================================
>>
>> Here I have to change the date part manually, however.
>> Any suggestions are really welcome.
>>
>> Good luck,
>> Mario
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

--
Daniel Robertson
Senior Research and Planning Associate
Institutional Research and Planning
Cornell University / irp.cornell.edu

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